Early China Coast Meteorology: The Role of Hong Kong

4 Government Astronomer or ‘Merely a Meteorological Observer’

4 Government Astronomer or ‘Merely a Meteorological Observer’ The labours of Doberck deserve notice, as we owe to this indefatigable astronomer the greater part of our knowledge of the binary-star orbits. Sir Robert Ball in Nature, 18861 Dr Doberck appears to have a competent knowledge of his work which is that merely of a Meteorological Observer. Governor Bowen to the Colonial Office, 18832 The Local Situation That the new observatory in Hong Kong was seen as a lynch-pin in a network of observatories is evident from several sources. Col. Palmer, in his 1881 proposals for an observatory, noted the enthusiasm of the director of the Manila Observatory, Fr. Faura, for such a complimentary station, and commented on how a proposed series of meteorological stations under the Chinese Maritime Customs ‘working in cooperation with the larger establishments in Japan, Shanghai, Manila and Hong Kong, would help vastly towards the achievement of those results which the meteorologists of the world so much desire’. By 1883 the observatory situation in the Orient was as follows: private Jesuit observatories at Manila and Shanghai, a fledgling Japanese observatory at Tokyo, part-time observers at the treaty ports (reporting to Shanghai) and the soon to-be-opened observatory at Hong Kong. By contrast, in British India (including Burma and Nepal) there were 125 observing stations in operation at that time, so the potential which the new director might embrace in the study of meteorology can be readily MacKeown_04_ch04.indd 73 25/11/2010 9:29 AM 74 Early China Coast Meteorology appreciated. That that potential was not to be realized can be seen to have two major explanations: the director’s less than total commitment to the subject and, from day one, his adversarial attitude to the other players on the field. As we have seen, the director of the observatory at Shanghai, Dechevrens, proposed a plan of collaboration of all the meteorological stations in China, centred on Zikawei. Doberck, for his part suggested something similar, but to be centred on Hong Kong. As we will see, the opposite of collaboration was to result. What kind of person was expected in the occupancy of this new government position?Therequiredlevelofcompetenceinthephysicalsciencesingovernment heretofore was not very high, such persons being almost exclusively practically minded, engineering-directed — people like the harbour master or the surveyor general. The exceptions were the staff of the short-lived, and spectacularly unsuccessful, Mint (1866–68), in particular its master, William Kinder, and his assayer, Charles Tookey, a fellow of the Institute of Chemistry.3 The competence and dedication of staff in the Harbour Master’s Office, and the Surveyor General’s Office, at least in maintaining meteorological records, were admirable, even if the accuracy of the measurements would later be called into question. Satisfaction with the staff at the Mint, however, especially with its master, William Kinder, had been far from complete. This was to set up an animosity between the governor of the day and Kinder which, in a way but for different reasons, would be reflected in Doberck’s future relations twenty years later with several governors, although the earlier conflict was exhibited in much more diplomatic exchanges than would characterize those involving the director. Writing to London a month before the scheduled opening of the Mint, the governor, Richard Graves Mac Donnell — the establishment of a mint had been the idea of his predecessor Sir Hercules Robinson — commented: ‘I myself have formed an unfavourable judgment of the general competency of the Mint staff to conduct successfully the difficult operation of opening a new Mint in a strange country, … I form that opinion chiefly from the fact of few of the numerous difficulties now urged as excuses having been foreseen. … I am less sanguine as to the prospects of the Mint — especially as its expenses are daily increasing’.4 Such incompetence could not be laid at the feet of the founding director of the Observatory, and the question of difficult instrumentation did not arise. He was in a different category, certainly in his own eyes. He had a doctorate when such was uncommon, and espoused a rigorous approach to scientific questions, characterized above all by a sensitivity to the uncertainties in measurement, and an emphasis on the rigour of calibration that this implied. He had been elected a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (London) in April 1883, an honour he held for ten years, eventually surrendering it by resigning at the end of 1893. Even so, we still find...